Label-free molecular imaging is a promising utility to study tissues in terms of the identification of their compartments as well as chemical features and alterations induced by disease. The aim of this work was to assess if higher magnification of optics in the FTIR microscope coupled with the focal plane detector (FPA) resulted in better resolution of lung structures and if the histopathological features correlated with clustering of spectral images. FTIR spectroscopic imaging was performed on paraffinized lung tissue sections from mice with optics providing a total magnification of 61× and 36×. Then, IR images were subjected to unsupervised cluster analysis and, subsequently, cluster maps were compared with hematoxylin and eosin staining of the same tissue section. Based on these results, we observed minute features such as cellular compartments in single alveoli and bronchiole, blood cells and megakaryocytes in a vessel as well as atelectasis of the lung. In the case of the latter, differences in composition were also noted between the tissue from the non-cancerous and cancerous specimen. This study demonstrated the ability of high-definition FTIR imaging to evaluate the chemical features of well-resolved lung structures that could complement the histological examination widely used in animal models of disease.

无标签分子成像是一种很有前途的实用工具，可用于研究组织的隔室识别以及疾病引起的化学特征和改变。这项工作的目的是评估 FTIR 显微镜中光学的更高放大倍数与焦平面检测器 (FPA) 的结合是否导致肺结构的更好分辨率，以及组织病理学特征是否与光谱图像的聚类相关。FTIR 光谱成像对小鼠的石蜡化肺组织切片进行了光学处理，总放大倍数为 61× 和 36×。然后，对红外图像进行无监督聚类分析，随后将聚类图与同一组织切片的苏木精和伊红染色进行比较。基于这些结果，我们观察到微小的特征，例如单个肺泡和细支气管中的细胞隔室、血管中的血细胞和巨核细胞以及肺不张。在后者的情况下，还注意到来自非癌性和癌性样本的组织之间的成分差异。这项研究证明了高清 FTIR 成像能够评估分辨率良好的肺结构的化学特征，这可以补充广泛用于疾病动物模型的组织学检查。